The role of extracellular polymeric substances on aerobic granulation with stepwise increase of salinity

A granular sequencing batch reactor (GSBR) worked for 164 days to study the effect of salinity on aerobic granulation. The feeding had an organic loading rate (OLR) of 1.6 kg COD c5m 123 c5d 121 and a gradual increase of salinity (from 0.30 to 38 g NaCl 12 c5L 121) to promote a biological salt-adaptation. First aggregates (average diameter 48 0.4 mm) appeared after 14 days. Extracellular polymeric substances (EPSs) analyses revealed that proteins were mainly higher than polysaccharides, and microorganisms metabolized EPSs as additional carbon source, mostly in feast phase, to face the energy demand for salinity adaptation. No significant worsening of organic matter removal was observed. The initial decrease of nitrification (from 58% to 15%) and the subsequent increase (up to 25%), confirmed the acclimation of AOBs to saline environment, while the accumulation of nitrites suggested NOBs inhibition. The nitrogen removal initially decreased from 58% to 15%, due to the inhibitory effect of salinity, and subsequently increased up to 29% denoting a simultaneous nitrification\u2013denitrification. The dimensions of mature granules (higher than 1 mm) probably involved PAOs growth in the inner anaerobic layers. Nitrites caused a temporary deterioration of phosphorous removal (from 60% to almost zero), that increased up to 25% when nitrites were depleted

Cultivation of granular sludge with hypersaline oily wastewater

The time required to stabilise mature aerobic granules is rather variable. In addition, cultivation time and the structural characteristics of granules seem to be related to the nature of wastewater influent. Granular sludge has been used for the treatment of several industrial wastewaters, but nothing has been reported about wastewater characterized by the simultaneous presence of hydrocarbons and high chloride concentration. In this work, the authors analysed the granulation process and performance as well as the physical characteristics of aerobic granules in two Granular Sequencing Batch Airlift Reactors (GSBARs), fed with acetate-based synthetic wastewater in reactor 1 (R1) and with a mixture of real and simulated slop (R2). The results obtained in 100 days show that full granulation was achieved in both reactors. The granules in R2 developed more quickly, but they appeared slightly unstable and more susceptible to breaking. Despite high salt concentration, the efficiency of phosphorous and carbon removal was satisfactory. Low nitrification activity was observed in R1, confirming that a longer time is necessary to obtain the acclimation of autotrophic biomass in aerobic granules. In R2 the combined effect of salinity and hydrocarbons caused the inhibition of the autotrophic biomass, with the consequence that nitrification was absent. Hydrocarbons were initially removed by adsorption afterwards by biological degradation with a removal efficiency of over 90%

Wastewater valorization: Practice around the world at pilot-and full-scale

LA/P/0140/2020Over the last few years, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) have been rebranded as water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs), which recognize the resource recovery potential that exists in wastewater streams. WRRFs contribute to a circular economy by not only producing clean water but by recovering valuable resources such as nutrients, energy, and other bio-based materials. To this aim, huge efforts in technological progress have been made to valorize sewage and sewage sludge, transforming them into valuable resources. This review summarizes some of the widely used and effective strategies applied at pilot-and full-scale settings in order to valorize the wastewater treatment process. An overview of the different technologies applied in the water and sludge line is presented, covering a broad range of resources, i.e., water, biomass, energy, nutrients, volatile fatty acids (VFA), polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), and exopolymeric substances (EPS). Moreover, guidelines and regulations around the world related to water reuse and resource valorization are reviewed.publishersversionpublishe

Concealed SARS-CoV-2 interstitial pneumonia unmasked by infarct-like acute myocarditis

A 38-year-old otherwise healthy man presented to the emergency department for sudden-onset oppressive chest pain. On admission, vital parameters were within normal limits and physical examination was unremarkable. Since the ECG showed mild ST-segment eleva- tion in the inferior leads (Panel A), he underwent urgent coronary angiography which ruled out obstructive coronary artery disease (Panel B). Transthoracic echocardiogram showed preserved left ven- tricular (LV) ejection fraction with inferolateral wall hypokinesis. The peak of high-sensitive troponin I was 4038 ng/L (normal value <20). Acute myocarditis was suspected, and a cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) was performed. High signal intensity (SI) of the mid-basal LV lateral wall on T2 short tau inversion recovery (STIR) sequences con- sistent with myocardial oedema (Panel C) and subepicardial late gado- linium enhancement in the same location (Panel D) were detected. Unexpectedly, areas of high SI on T2-STIR images were also noted on both lungs (Panel C), suggesting a pulmonary inflammatory pro- cess. Despite an initially negative chest X-ray, computed tomography revealed bilateral ground-glass opacity with multifocal consolidation and thickening of interlobular septa consistent with interstitial pneumonia (Panel E). Considering the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, a nasopharyngeal swab was obtained resulting positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. The patient remained free from either cardiovascular or respiratory symptoms and presented only mild fever (37.5C). Laboratory tests detected an increase of transaminases and C-reactive protein (6.73 mg/dL; normal value <0.5) with stable lymphocytopenia. After 20 days of hospitalization, he was discharged with the diagnosis of infarct-like myocarditis associated with subclinical SARS-CoV-2 respiratory infection. Acute myocarditis in the setting of SARS-CoV-2 infection has been anecdotally reported and its mechanism remains to be elucidated. So far, the SARS-CoV-2 genome has never been detected within the myocardium, suggesting an immune-mediated inflammatory myocardial injury. For the first time we reported a case of subclinical SARS-CoV-2 interstitial pneumonia occasionally unmasked by CMR performed for acute myocarditis

Evaluating rainbowing for ocean alkalinity enhancement

Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) is a technique proposed to address ocean acidification and global warming. This study examines rainbowing (i.e. water jets pumped into the air from ships) for the slaked lime slurry distribution. The fluid dynamic behaviour-both the in-air trajectory and subsurface-was studied using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method. Various outflow velocities were simulated for calm seas; different dilution factors and environmental slaked lime concentration spikes have been found. Linking slurry concentration to pH, discharge conditions that avoid damage to marine biota have been identified. A preliminary cost analysis compares rainbowing to ship-wake discharge. Rainbowing requires high power consumption to project large volumes of water far from ships. Very high dilution is needed, mainly because of the artificial requirement not to momentarily exceed 24-hour environmental pH limits; the effect of ocean turbulence on instantaneous pH peaks is negligible and is not considered in the analysis. Emissions due to energy consumption almost equalize carbon dioxide removed during discharge, making the method inefficient (only 176 kg of CO2 removed per ton of slaked lime spread). Previous ship-wake discharge analysis shows greater OAE performance and lower cost (5.5 versus 388 per ton of CO2 removed). In conclusion-based on the conservative environmental limits imposed, and the specific modeling undertaken-rainbowing is not demonstrated as an efficient method for OAE

A comparative study between a power and a connectivity sEEG biomarker for seizure-onset zone identification in temporal lobe epilepsy

Background: Ictal stereo-encephalography (sEEG) biomarkers for seizure onset zone (SOZ) localization can be classified depending on whether they target abnormalities in signal power or functional connectivity between signals, and they may depend on the frequency band and time window at which they are estimated. New method: This work aimed to compare and optimize the performance of a power and a connectivity-based biomarker to identify SOZ contacts from ictal sEEG recordings. To do so, we used a previously introduced power-based measure, the normalized mean activation (nMA), which quantifies the ictal average power activation. Similarly, we defined the normalized mean strength (nMS), to quantify the ictal mean functional connectivity of every contact with the rest. The optimal frequency bands and time windows were selected based on optimizing AUC and F2-score. Results: The analysis was performed on a dataset of 67 seizures from 10 patients with pharmacoresistant temporal lobe epilepsy. Our results suggest that the power-based biomarker generally performs better for the detection of SOZ than the connectivity-based one. However, an equivalent performance level can be achieved when both biomarkers are independently optimized. Optimal performance was achieved in the beta and lower-gamma range for the power biomarker and in the lower- and higher-gamma range for connectivity, both using a 20 or 30 s period after seizure onset. Conclusions: The results of this study highlight the importance of this optimization step over frequency and time windows when comparing different SOZ discrimination biomarkers. This information should be considered when training SOZ classifiers on retrospective patients’ data for clinical applications.M.V., R.Z. and A.T.C. were funded by the European Regional Development Funds, Grant/Award Number: CECH/001-P-001682. A. T. C. and M.V. were funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, and the State Investigation Agency (MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033), Grant Award Number: PID2020-119072RAI00. G.D. was supported by the AGAUR research support grant (ref. 2021 SGR 00917) funded by the Department of Research and Universities of the Generalitat of Catalunya, the NODYN Project PID2022- 136216NB-I00 financed by the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ FEDER, UE., the Ministry of Science and Innovation, the State Research Agency and the European Regional Development Fund and the project NEurological MEchanismS of Injury, and Sleep-like cellular dynamics (NEMESIS) (ref. 101071900) funded by the EU ERC Synergy Horizon Europe. M.V. was supported by grant PTQ2022-012679, funded by Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities, and the State Investigation Agency (MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Does the feeding strategy enhance the aerobic granular sludge stability treating saline effluents?

The development and stability of aerobic granular sludge (AGS) was studied in two Sequencing Batch Reactors (SBRs) treating fish canning wastewater. R1 cycle comprised a fully aerobic reaction phase, while R2 cycle included a plug-flow anaerobic feeding/reaction followed by an aerobic reaction phase. The performance of the AGS reactors was compared treating the same effluents with variable salt concentrations (4.97e13.45 g NaCl/L) and organic loading rates (OLR, 1.80e6.65 kg CODs/(m3 $d)). Granulation process was faster in R2 (day 34) than in R1 (day 90), however the granular biomass formed in the fully aerobic configuration was more stable to the variable feeding composition. Thus, in R1 solid retention times (SRT), up to 15.2 days, longer than in R2, up to 5.8 days, were achieved. These long SRTs values helped the retention of nitrifying organisms and provoked the increase of the nitrogen removal efficiency to 80% in R1 while it was approximately of 40% in R2. However, the presence of an anaerobic feeding/reaction phase increased the organic matter removal efficiency in R2 (80e90%) which was higher than in R1 with a fully aerobic phase (75e85%). Furthermore, in R2 glycogen-accumulating organisms (GAOs) dominated inside the granules instead of phosphorous-accumulating organisms (PAOs), suggesting that GAOs resist better the stressful conditions of a variable and high-saline influent. In terms of AGS properties an anaerobic feeding/ reaction phase is not beneficial, however it enables the production of a better quality effluentThis research has been financed by the Spanish Government (AEI) through the projects GRANDSEA (CTM2014-55397-JIN) and TREASURE (CTQ2017-83225-C2-1-R), and by the European Commission (EU) through the LIFE project SEACAN (LIFE14ENV/ES/000852). The authors from the USC belong to the GRC ED431C 2017/29 and CRETUS (ED431E 2018/01). All these programs are co-financed by FEDER (EU) fundsS

Assessment of a fast method to predict the biochemical methane potential based on biodegradable COD obtained by fractionation respirometric tests

The biochemical methane potential test (BMP) is the most common analytical technique to predict the performance of anaerobic digesters. However, this assay is time-consuming (from 20 to over than 100 days) and consequently impractical when it is necessary to obtain a quick result. Several methods are available for faster BMP prediction but, unfortunately, there is still a lack of a clear alternative. Current aerobic tests underestimate the BMP of substrates since they only detect the easily biodegradable COD. In this context, the potential of COD fractionation respirometric assays, which allow the determination of the particulate slowly biodegradable fraction, was evaluated here as an alternative to early predict the BMP of substrates. Seven different origin waste streams were tested and the anaerobically biodegraded organic matter (CODmet) was compared with the different COD fractions. When considering adapted microorganisms, the appropriate operational conditions and the required biodegradation time, the differences between the CODmet, determined through BMP tests, and the biodegradable COD (CODb) obtained by respirometry, were not significant (CODmet (57.8026 ± 21.2875) and CODb (55.6491 ± 21.3417), t (5) = 0.189, p = 0.853). Therefore, results suggest that the BMP of a substrate might be early predicted from its CODb in only few hours. This methodology was validated by the performance of an inter-laboratory studyconsidering four additional substratesThis research was supported by the Spanish Government (AEI) through the TREASURE project [CTQ 2017-83225-C2-1-R]. Moreover, authors would like to thank the EU and the AEI for funding, in the frame of the collaborative international Consortium AquaVal project, [PCIN-2017-047], financed under the ERA-NET WaterWorks2015 Co-funded Call. This ERA-NET is an integral part of the 2016 Joint Activities developed by the Water Challenges for a Changing World Joint Programme Initiative (Water JPI). Authors from the USC belong to the Galician Competitive Research Group GRC ED431C 2017/29. All these programs are co-funded by the FEDER (EU). Lucia Argiz is a Xunta de Galicia Fellow, Axudas de Apoio á Etapa Predoutoral (ED481A-2019/083), grant cofounded by the operative program FSE Galicia 2014–2020. In addition, this work was funded by the Chilean Government through the projects FONDECYT 1180650 and ANID/FONDAP/15130015. Marisol Belmonte belongs to LABMAI-Facultad de Ingeniería, HUB-Ambiental UPLA and UPLAguas Research GroupS

Biofunctionalization of 3D printed collagen with bevacizumab-loaded microparticles targeting pathological angiogenesis

Pathological angiogenesis is a crucial attribute of several chronic diseases such as cancer, age-related macular degeneration, and osteoarthritis (OA). In the case of OA, pathological angiogenesis mediated by the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), among other factors, contributes to cartilage degeneration and to implants rejection. In line with this, the use of the anti-VEGF bevacizumab (BVZ) has been shown to prevent OA progression and support cartilage regeneration. The aim of this work was to functionalize a medical grade collagen with poly (lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microparticles containing BVZ via three-dimensional (3D) printing to target pathological angiogenesis. First, the effect of several formulation parameters on the encapsulation and release of BVZ from PLGA microparticles was studied. Then, the anti-angiogenic activity of released BVZ was tested in a 3D cell model. The 3D printability of the microparticle-loaded collagen ink was tested by evaluating the shape fidelity of 3D printed structures. Results showed that the release and the encapsulation efficiency of BVZ could be tuned as a function of several formulation parameters. In addition, the released BVZ was observed to reduce vascularization by human umbilical vein endothelial cells. Finally, the collagen ink with embedded BVZ microparticles was successfully printed, leading to shape-stable meniscus-, nose- and auricle-like structures. Taken altogether, we defined the conditions for the successful combination of BVZ-loaded microparticles with the 3D printing of a medical grade collagen to target pathological angiogenesisThis project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 814444 (MEFISTO). The authors thank mAbxience-GH Genhelix for the kind donation of Bevacizumab (Avastin®) and Geistlich Pharma AG for providing the medical grade collagen. AA acknowledges funding from “la Caixa” Foundation (ID 100010434) with a fellowship code LCF/BQ/PR22/11920003. RL acknowledges funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 949806, VOLUME-BIO). RL and JM acknowledge funding from the Dutch Artritis Foundation (LLP-12 and LLP-22)S

Time, intersubjectivity, and musical relationship in Alfred Schutz

In questo lavoro, affronto alcuni aspetti della relazione tra tempo e intersoggettività in Alfred Schutz . Presento una sintesi dell’architettura metodologica del sociologo austriaco, delineando la specificità della relazione tra tempo e coscienza. Prendo in esame la trattazione dell’esperienza musicale come esempio di declinazione peculiare di una serie di dinamiche temporali connesse alla costituzione intersoggettiva dei significati. Infine, espongo alcune tesi di autori che si sono occupati della relazione tra tempo, intersoggettività e musica in Schutz. La relazione musicale è un esempio di contesto dotato di senso, non oggetto di concettualizzazione, che esemplifica la relazione tra senso soggettivo ed esperienza dell’altro. La teoria dell’appresentazione di Schutz è il centro del processo di costituzione dei significati della prensione dell’altro. L’emersione dei significati è legata alle dinamiche dei poli passivi e attivi della coscienza e alla costituzione, nella we-relation, di una dimensione radicalmente intersoggettiva nella quale si supera la distinzione cartesiana tra interno ed esterno.Time, intersubjectivity, and musical relationship in Alfred Schutz Riccardo Venturini In this work I tackle certain aspects of the relationship between time and intersubjectivity in Alfred Schutz. I present a summary of the methodological architecture of the Austrian sociologist, outlining the specificity of the relationship between time and consciousness. I discuss the treatment of the musical experience as an example of the peculiar declination of a series of temporal dynamics connected to the intersubjective creation of meanings. Finally, I set out some thoughts related to the debate on the relationship between time, intersubjectivity and music in Schutz. The musical relationship is a context endowed with meaning, not the object of conceptualization, that allows us to identify in a paradigmatic way the relationship between the subjective sense and experience of the other. The theory of appresentation of Schutz is the center of the process of constitution of meaning of the understanding of the other. The emergence of meaning is related to the dynamics of the passive and active poles of the consciousness and the constitution, in the we-relation, of a radically intersubjective dimension that exceeds the Cartesian distinction between inside and outside